Did you ever wake up in the morning after sleeping and you’re like “OH MY BACK!!” you get out of bed and you can’t move. Or maybe you worked all weekend in the yard and you have a great day and you’re like “Oh! I pulled my back while twisting” and you get that cold drink and sit down in the lazy boy and you go to get up and can’t even move cause your leg is numb.

Hi I’m Doctor Christopher Hood from Hood Chiropractic and I will tell you I’ve been in back pain before.

I know it can be debilitating and it happens to all kinds of people in all kinds of different ways. So, if you’re reading this now, I’m going to give you three quick and easy things you can do right now, where if you’re in this situation wither it just happened, wither its chronic and it happens all this time for you, it can give you a bit of relief.

Okay so, here we go. Number one. When it bothers you, whether it's happening all the time or its just grabbing you from the twisting it in the back yard. You don’t want to heat it up. So many people say heat feels good, man I get that. I like hot showers too and heat does make the muscles feel better. The problem is, someone with back muscle spasms, if you heat it, you’re bringing more blood to the area. So people are going in the hot shower and twisting it up. That’s the wrong thing to do! You’re going to bring more blood to the area. You’re going to sit on grandmas heating pad, flip that switch on you’re going to lay there for an hour then you’re going to get up and not be able to walk. Heat brings more blood to the area, it’ll tighten up.

So, what you’re going to do instead. Number one, you’re going to ice it. Wet paper towel on your bare skin. You don’t want to just slap a bag of peas on there, it’s going to burn you. What you’re going to do is get a wet paper towel it’s going to insulate you. You’re going to put it on your bare skin where ever the injury is. Bag of peas, ice pack, bag of ice I don’t care. 20 minutes only. If you ice pass 20 minutes, your body has a nature reflect where it brings more blood to the area, it’s going to bring more blood to the area just like putting heat on it. 20 minutes on 40 minutes off. That’s the first thing. Ice, not heat.

The second thing you’re going to do is you’re going to want to use some kind of natural anti-inflammatory. My subjection for that is flax seed oil, fish oil, extra virgin olive oil. These are omega fat oils you guys hear about in the news everyone all crazy about taking fish oil, they're naturally anti-inflammatory. It’s food man, just natural food. Couple of those every day will start bringing the inflammation down along with the ice goes a long way.

Number three, third thing. Most of the injuries that I see are actually not really accruing in the lower back. But are coming from tight hamstrings and hip flexors. So many patients that I have in my office don’t actually take the time to exercise or stretch anymore. So, when they go to be that weekend warrior who’s going to plow the back forty of their house and pull weeds and get everything done, it’s just too much on their bodies. So, a regular stretching regimen is important. Now when I say hip flexors, there’s a muscle called the piriformis and the piriformis muscle actually is the hip flexor and it attached to the discs in your back. So if you pull that muscle, man, it’s going to feel like you blow a disc in your back. You can walk in my office with a cane. You’ll be 20 years old but you’re moving like your 90.

Be like “doc I pulled my back!!” some people come in and are like “I pulled my scgatica” and I’m like “scgatica?” there like “my scgaitca hurts!!!” and I’m like “Oh sciatica!” different, right? That muscle the sciatica nerve runs through that muscle. If you put that in spasm. Man, you’re going to feel that all the way down your legs. So preformist stretch, nice and simple, you cross your leg over, you stretch. By the way if you haven’t stretched in 30 years. Stretching happens when you exhale. So, people go to scratch and they lean over to stretch and there like *gasp* it hurts and they hold their breath.

Nice easy deep breathing. I don’t believe in biolistic stretching, biolistic stretching like the swimmer getting ready to swim. Don’t do that nice easy stretching on that muscle. The reason this happens to most people is, number one, they’re not flexible. Number 2 their spine is misaligned in there lower back and pelvis from an accident or injury when they were a child. But really, what I see clinically, we sit too much!!! We’re in cars all day, we’re sitting in desks on computers all day long and its putting us in this old ages posture.

If you look at a normal x-ray of a spine from the side. The lower back is this natural ‘C’ shape curve and when you have that natural curve the muscles are attaching the way they want so when you bend and move things work properly and the nerves that go into your legs are nice and health. But since we’re sitting all day long our backs lose that natural curve. We just sit so darn much it brings the pelvis underneath and straightens that curve out. Then we go to do something, you know you shouldn’t pick up the newspaper and blow your back out. You should be able to pick up the paper, but because you lose the curve in our lower back you don’t have the muscle, they won’t act correctly, so when you do something you should be able to do, like weed the garden or sleep and the muscles grab and pull.

So, in my office on top of the three things we were talking about, what I would want to do to fix that curve is actually find the cause of why you’re having it. So, we want to take an x-ray of an abnormal straighten curve into a natural relaxed curve and you would do that through some genital adjusting and through some very physical exercises both here at the office and at home to get that natural curve back in your lower back. You know why? Because we want the change to be permanent.

I want you to be able to pick of your kids and go play golf. Do the things you like but as times progress and that curve continues to straighten out it’s not going to get better it’s going to get worse.

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We like to say “it’s all good in the hood”. We’re here to help you, God bless you guys. ALL GOOD IN THE HOOD. See ya